Ultimate Priorities for Space and Space Science By Paul J .Werbos, National Science Foundation (NSF).pdf

What does serious philosophy have to tell us about the ultimate goals we should be pursuing
in space and in space science? That depends of course on what school of philosophy one
belongs to.
Personally, I do not believe that any of the well-known traditional schools of philosophy are
robust and coherent enough to engage fully with the difficult concrete choices we are facing
either in science or with space, short of some extension. It is easy for a mouse, without
using any words or philosophy at all, to make sane and rational decisions about the small
things he/she sees in everyday life – but there are levels of technology and large-scale reality
that are beyond the abilities of the mouse. We humans, with ordinary philosophies and rules
of thumb, can use words to do better than the mouse, but the full possibilities and challenges
of space and science require that we expand our full awareness much more than what the
everyday tools offer. In Heidegger’s term, we need to expand our “Being.”
This paper begins by reviewing a new synthesis of philosophy, which does not violate what we
already knew even before we started using words, but which provides a foundation for
understanding the important choices before us with space and science, in connection with
each other. It will begin with what should be a universal kind of new synthesis, which may be
called “the philosophy of sanity and integrity.” But then, it is unavoidable that different life
experience legitimately leads different people to different specifics. Section 3 reviews more
specific concepts about the soul and the concrete nature of life, with which I would not
expect all sane people to agree, but which many of us believe are an essential aspect of the
challenges we are facing. To give this a name, I hereby call it the “symbiotic noosphere
hypothesis” (SNH). Because I derive my views about the goals for space and science in space
from these first principles, I will discuss them in two steps – first, a simple discussion in
section 2, which should be universally acceptable, and then a more detailed discussion in
section 3, for those who are prepared to go further.